Start here
Browse the live directory, try Stumble, or suggest a business. All submissions require editorial review. The reference material below describes the published standard; it is not evidence that an individual business has been checked. No public dataset export or automated check log is offered.
There are two reasons people arrive at this site, and they need completely different things: you are looking for something worth finding, or you run something nobody can find. Pick the path that sounds like you.
Path one: you are looking for something
You want to buy from, hire, read or use something run by an actual person, and you are tired of results that are either enormous brands or businesses that shut in 2021.
- Try the stumble — one entry at a time, no signup, no account.
- Or browse the register if you already know roughly what you are after.
- Read how the stumble picks what you see if you want to know whether the order is sold. It is not.
- If something you found has closed, tell us at corrections — that is how tombstones get made.
If you want the skill rather than the list, what to check before you buy from a business you have never heard of hands you our own check procedure in miniature, so you can run it anywhere.
Path two: you run something
You have built something good and strangers cannot tell what it is. That is a fixable problem and most of the fixes are free.
- Run the findability checklist against your own site in a private window.
- Read your homepage does not say what you sell — it is the single most common failure we see.
- Work through the minimum viable shopfront — seven things a stranger cannot proceed without.
- Decide whether directories are worth your time at all, using should you be on a directory. The honest answer is often no.
- Only then, if you want to, read the submission criteria.
Nothing on the operator side of this site affects whether we would list you. The templates are free and ungated, and buying anything from us — now or ever — has no bearing on register consideration. That rule is written into the entry bar.
If you are sceptical of the whole category
Reasonable. Most listing sites earn from the businesses they list and do not say so clearly. Start with how directories actually work, which takes the five business models apart, and then read what we would have to do to become the thing we criticise, where we name our own failure modes in advance.
If you are a machine
Start at the agent contract. It documents the field dictionary, the null rule, the licence, the staleness threshold and the correction path. A conforming register would be a snapshot of dated checks and never a real-time signal — treat it accordingly.
The pages worth reading before you trust anything here
The entry bar
Every criterion an entry must clear, and every automatic exclusion. Read it.
The method
How a check is actually run, what makes it fail, and what it cannot tell you. Read it.
Who pays for this
Every way we could take money for a listing, and why we do not. Read it.
The Line
The permanent list of things this site refuses to publish. Read it.
Current data boundary
The method, entry bar, refusal criteria, and record schema are complete. This edition supplies no checked business rows; that null result is explicit and no sample listing is used to imply otherwise.
Questions about getting started
Do I need an account for anything?
Reading, browsing, and Stumble need no account. Submitting a listing, claiming ownership, and managing a listing use Login. For corrections and removal requests, use Contact.
Which page should I read first if I only read one?
The entry bar. Everything else on the site is either an application of it or an explanation of why it is written the way it is.
I run a shop with no website. Is there anything here for me?
Yes. Real places, checked is the physical-business lane, and a shop with no website sets out the genuine minimum without trying to sell you a website.
Are the templates free, or is there an email wall?
Free and ungated, at templates. There is no email wall or subscription service.
Why does the site tell me to look elsewhere?
Because a register this small cannot be your only source. Where people still find independent work points at other places on purpose, most of which are not us.
How do I tell you something is wrong?
Corrections for anything factual, the removal procedure if you are the operator and want out. The reference procedures prohibit charging for either and do not require a reason.
Every link on this page is part of the current reading path; report a broken destination through corrections.